The sad story of the death of diabetic Mrs. Maureen Pineki is the subject of an even sadder report released by the Auckland DHB today. The reason it is sad is because it comes to almost the entirely wrong conclusions about this poor lady’s death. The report urges:

RECOMMENDATIONS
LABTESTS:
Review systems to ensure timely testing, especially of [...]

The editorial in the Herald today in support of an excess charge for ACC payments is an excellent, eminently sensible article. Unfortunately, in reality, this may be a little more difficult to achieve than it looks. GP’s and A&Ms already have a part-charge for most patients, as do most radiologists. The only place where you [...]

I know Granny Herald is getting old, but I had no idea she was completely senile.
Key butters up Clark with Vogel’s at NY meeting
NEW YORK – The relationship between Prime Minister Helen Clark and her National Party replacement John Key was anything but stale when the pair met for talks in New York today [emphasis [...]

Well the Saturday Herald is splattered with so many hysterical articles about the evils of Labtests that it almost seems they have been bought out by DML. The articles range from the idiotic to the actually concerning (if true). There is the sad tale of the GP who wants to leave Auckland because Labtests is [...]

I noticed that today the Herald weighed in on the “Yes” side of the referendum. They had a poll. They had graphs. They had a lone “No” opinion for “balance”. They had a touching testimony from a loving, well-adjusted family who had not used smacking in child-rearing for generations (Discipline without pain for 50 years [...]

It is a truism that Health is a giant black hole that swallows government funding and always wants more. National have added an extra $3 billion dollars to the overall health budget and yet everyone is talking as if they had stripped health to the bone and closed half the hospitals.
The Dominion Post puts out [...]

Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article. 
You can always rely on the Herald to give us a bit of spam when we’re hungry:
Key will not guarantee tax cuts after this year
Prime Minister John Key is unwilling to give a categorical assurance that tax cuts promised for 2010 [...]

Yet another article in the continuing non-saga of Paula Bennett’s criminal non-connections. This time it has strayed from the evil tabloid twin and infected Granny Herald herself.
This is a non-story that is an unwarranted invasion of Paula Bennett’s personal life.
There is no evidence of a security issue.
There is no evidence of ministerial or parliamentary abuse [...]

I see the Herald on Sunday is continuing down it’s path to tabloid-dom. Apart from the front page looking suspiciously like a woman’s magazine, There is yet another article on page 2 about Paula Bennett’s “Gangster connection” that isn’t. Ms Bennett has released two letter that she wrote to the department of corrections on behalf [...]

I keeping with the old adage in the title, it seems that the Herald on Sunday has finally completed the transition it started when it changed it’s format to tabloid a few years back. With a front page news headline “Minister’s life with gang thug“, it has become a certified gutter tabloid. The online version [...]